Stitches
by Maya Beebop
Summary: He'd planned everything down to the most minute detail.  He'd even allowed for a window of deviation.  But what he'd never counted on...was her brother.
1. It's human nature to claw for air

**Chapter One**

_"It's human nature to claw for air..."

* * *

_

Damion Reisert dropped his overstuffed black book-bag on the wooden floor, looked around and let his eyes widen.

"Holy _crap_-…"

The floor was covered in broken glass, the door was a splintered mess, and a chalk-white body outline was scribbled on the ground next to a nasty dark-brown stain that looked suspiciously like blood. He bent down and ran his fingertips over the slighly warped wood. Definitely blood.

"Dad?" he called out. "Lise?"

Suddenly his pocket vibrated and let out an irritating electronic melody. He reached in and pulled out the cellphone, flipped it open and hit the "talk" button.

"Hello?"

"Damion, it's Dad," a deep voice crackled. "Where are you?"

The boy incredulously kicked over a large shard of glass. "I'm standing in what used to be our foyer."

"God…son, we're at the police station. Someone tried to kill me and Lisa-…"

He didn't let the man finish. As his face turned off all visible emotion, he answered, "I'll be there in ten."

He severed the call, passed through the yellow police tape again, went outside, hopped in his Jeep Wrangler, gunned the engine and took off.

He didn't even notice the cop tailing him until he ran his third red light in a row.

"_Shit_," he cursed, checking the rear-view mirror to be sure.

Pulling over, the officer walked up, tapped on the glass, and asked for his license. Damion handed it over and let out a string of expletives, especially when the cop ran it through the system and discovered a considerable list of offenses.

"It was only a couple parking tickets!" he snarled before the cop and his partner shoved the boy into the back seat in cuffs.

* * *

"Son, what's the meaning of this?" Joe Reisert demanded when he saw his son being shoved into the headquarters in handcuffs. The officers, realizing the older man was family, deposited him in a hard-backed wooden chair nearby. Lisa, with her tear-streaked face contorting in confusion when she laid eyes on him, stood up and came over. 

"Dame, what did you do?"

The boy scowled and gave the nearby policemen a dirty look. "I got _caught_. I just ran a couple lights and didn't pay a few parking tickets. It won't put me in jail; it'll just cost a boatload."

"And one hell of a wait in court," one of the officers snapped.

"But what happened?" Damion asked, diverting the attention from him. "Who tried to kill you?"

Joe looked to Lisa, who didn't answer. "Some hitman who was using Lisa to set up a job, as far as I understand."

The woman sniffed, obviously controlling her emotions. "But it's over."

"Where _is_ the bastard?" Damion snarled.

"In the hospital. Lisa kicked his ass but good," his father said with an air of pride and a smile.

Damion seethed, writhing in his bonds. He had no clue as to the real story, but anyone who came near his sister deserved more than just an ass-kicking. When he'd found out about the episode two years ago in the parking lot, he'd gone postal, even though Lisa tried to play it off. Damion had gone on a rampage, trying to find the guy. He never did. But he felt like he was doing his duty as a brother.

Of course, he was only seventeen at the time, so his idea of "duty" was a bit skewed.

"What's his name?" he asked nonchalantly.

But Lisa recognized the move instantly. "No. Don't worry about it, Dame. He's done."

"I just wanna know the guy's name," he shrugged.

"Something Ripper?" Joe commented.

"No!" Lisa cried, but the damage was already done. "Nothing! He was just some guy-…"

"Some guy that tried to kill you!" Damion protested, trying to pull his hands around front but almost cutting his wrists on the cuffs that still held him.

"Cool it, boy," the cop said.

"Why are you burying this guy so fast?" the boy demanded of Lisa. At this, she silenced and refused to say any more.

"Officer, is it really necessary to keep him locked up like that?" Joe asked.

The policeman released Damion with a condescending look, and the young man returned it with relish. He rubbed his wrists to bring feeling back into them and inspected the red rings that bore testament to the metal.

"What hospital?"

Lisa exploded. "Damion, don't you dare! Just leave it alone! He's near death, he's going to be put away for the rest of his natural life, everyone is ok! Just leave it the hell alone!"

Damion shot her an I'm-not-taking-"No"-for-an-answer look, but she countered with a go-to-Hell face until their father broke the silence.

"Damion, son, you should just leave it alone. We're going to go check into a hotel tonight – _all_ of us – and handle it all in the morning. Let's go."


	2. Even if they're not alive

**Chapter Two**

_"...even if they're not alive..."_

* * *

Of _course_ he wasn't going to leave it till morning. Damion eased the now un-impounded topless Jeep out of the Mariott parking lot and cruised down the neon strip towards the closest and most logical hospital.

Nineteen years old, Damion Reisert was a male version of his mother: a smoldering Italian boy with spiky black hair and pale green eyes that blazed with his current emotion. Olive skin that was smooth, except a few nasty scars on his lower arms from a particularly rough period in his early teenage years when he regressed into the gothic habit of cutting himself. Every time he noticed the paper-thin scars now, he hated himself a bit more.

He had enrolled in the University of Florida last year, which was much farther up north, near Gainesville. It was a good five-and-a-half hours away, four-and-a-half on a good day, but it only took him four flat when he got a call from home that Grandma Henrietta had died. He'd packed a bag and set out at three-thirty in the morning to drive home, and, afraid to face his mother so soon after the tragedy, decided to go to his father's house. He knew the old man had impulsively kept his old olive-green room in pristine condition, down to the model cars and baseball trophies lined up along his ego wall.

Coming home to this disaster was almost too much. No way was the man responsible gonna get off easy.

He screeched into the hospital's parking lot and set the emergency brake. Easing in the front doors, he steeled himself and confronted the night nurse with a charming smile.

"Hey. Did a guy check in today in critical condition? Last name sound like 'Ripper'?"

The woman eyed him like a shark eyed a dying tuna. He could see it was taking a toll on her and her repression to keep from sinking her teeth in. Nasty image, but true nonetheless.

"That depends," she purred, coming on _way_ too strong. "You're not the cops or a detective or the paparazzi, are you?"

"No. Just a worried friend."

"Well then. It's actually 'Rippner'. He's in 312. Third floor."

"Thanks, babe," he crooned as he moved away. Piece of cake. He didn't have his mother's good Italian charm and father's Russian build for nothing.

And suddenly, there he was, right outside the room. Taking a deep breath, he opened the door and went inside.

A heart monitor beeped constantly, and a halogen light burned above the single bed. The muted colors drew attention to the man's dark hair, which lay splayed over the pillows. His throat, left leg, and right arm were all heavily bandaged, his hand was cast, a dressing lay over his chest and purple bruises marred his skin.

Jesus, Lisa _had_ fucked this guy up but good.

"It must suck to be you right now, huh?" Damion began.

The man opened his eyes wearily, taking in the new player. Groaning, he swuired a bit under the blanket and sighed.

"…the hell are you?" he rasped.

Damion smirked, grabbed the nearby chair, dragged it over and straddled it. "Just another person here to make your life miserable."

"Take a number," Rippner managed before closing his eyes once again.

The boy waited a moment before speaking. "You know what happened to her two years ago?"

"Yes."

This took Damion by surprise. He'd meant to use the story as a lead-in. Looked like now he'd have to improvise.

"She was hurt, yeah, but nowhere near as pissed as me. You know, I tried to find the guy; never did.

"It's sort of comforting to know now I can put a face to her pain."

"Who are you?" Rippner repeated. "What do you care? You're not the cops-…"

Suddenly Damion descended on him, digging his fingers like claws into the man's long hair and hospital dress.

"I'm her brother, you son of a bitch. Never though about that, did you? Figured the only one who personally cared about Lisa was a retired old man.

"Now, you may be feeling some personally vendetta against my sister for royally kicking your sorry ass from here to Kingdom Come." He pulled his lips back in a hiss. "But trust me, if you ever manage to haul your carcass out of a hospital bed again, you touch one hair on her head and what they bury won't even _resemble_ you."

He released and drifted back into the shadowed corner near the door. "I'm glad we had this little talk," he growled, flashing his teeth in a smug grin.

As Rippner clenched his teeth, trying to control the pain in his scalp, Damion exited, gently closing the door behind him and nodding with a contented smile to the nurse as he left.


	3. Damaged people are dangerous

**Chapter Three**

_"...Damaged people are dangerous..."

* * *

_

"Damion, you little snake-in-the-grass. You went!" Lisa spat over coffee and danishes the next morning. 

He calmly sipped his black regular and shrugged.

"You just couldn't keep your nose out of it, could you? God…" She sighed disgustedly and took a bite of bagel.

"Really, Dame, it's not safe," Joe commented as he sat down with his food. "What if-…"

"Nothing's going to happen. We just talked." He picked up the day's paper and began to scan the columns.

"Damion!" Lisa snapped, reaching over and pulling down the barrier of newsprint. "Now he knows about you! What if…"

Slowly he took his sister's hand and rubbed it reassuringly as tears came to her eyes.

"He's a broken man, Lise. I could just tell…I saw it in his eyes."

"You're wrong," she whispered, looking away. "He's just regrouping."

"Oh, hell," Joe cursed as he picked up the paper.

"What?"

"Says here the bastard somehow escaped from the hospital late last night. Damn it…"

Lisa snatched the paper from his hand and Damion could almost hear her mind snapping.

"Damn it, Dad, you _had_ to say something?" he hissed under his breath as Lisa read.

"I'm not going to keep it a secret, am I?" he countered.

Meanwhile, she'd slammed the news down and gave them a strong look. "We have to go."

"What, _now_?"

"_Yes_, now! We beat the man into a bloody pulp! Of course he's gonna come after us!"

"Uh, I believe that beatdown was courtesy of _you_, Lise."

She glared at her brother. "Whatever. We have to leave. It's too easy to find us here. He'll look for nearby hotels, motels, friends, family-…"

"And _then_ what's he gonna do? Limp and wheeze at us?"

"Damion, stop mocking your sister. She has every right to be frightened."

"And who named you mediator? C'mon, Dad, just pick a side. Run blind…or stay secure and show the bastard we're not scared?"

"Put it that was, young man, and I say run."

Damion stared open-mouthed at his father. His selfless, headstrong father who believed in protection and certainty and standing up to intimidation, backing down from a crippled little man.

"What's happened to this family?" he muttered, crossing his arms and looking away.

* * *

They went back upstairs to pack. Damion escaped into his room and threw his stuff together, fuming. All he'd wanted was to come home, comfort and be comforted with his family. Now he had to deal with even _more_ shit.

He'd just barely located his other pair of boxers when he heard a piercing shriek from the next room. Instinctively, he slammed through the connecting door that he'd made Lisa leave open, and took in the scene.

Lisa was staring at a piece of paper that was lying on her pillow. On it was the phrase "We'll talk soon" scribbled in red ink.

"He's here! Oh my God-…" She was hyperventilating; her legs were giving out. Damion raced forward to catch her.

"Dad!" he yelled, and Mr. Reisert barreled in, pushing his glasses up to his eyes.

"What happened?"

"I don't know. But she says he's here."

"You still have that Mastercard I gave you for emergencies?"

"Yeah."

"Then let's go. To Hell with the luggage."

They ran downstairs, opting against the elevator. Damion slid into the driver's seat of his Wrangler as Joe eased Lisa into the backseat and hopped shotgun.

"Where are we going?" the teen asked.

"North."

"Like there's any _other_ direction to go in south Florida?" he demanded as they blazed out of the lot.

They cut a swath through the state, keeping the tank full and stopping only for food and toilet breaks. Joe and Damion switched driving duty while Lisa slept, her hair flying in the windy backseat.

Somewhere in the mid-afternoon, Joe turned to his son, who was focused on the road.

"You wonder what's going on in her head right now…!" he shouted over the blaring radio that Damion had playing to keep him calm.

"So long as she doesn't wake up screaming, I don't care!" the boy responded as he changed lanes. "It's bad enough that I gotta come home to this crap after grandma died! Now you want me to worry about my sister's mental health?"

Joe scowled. "Dame, I'm surprised at you! It's not her fault-…!"

"Yeah, it really is! She's the one who decided to be a manager at that hotel! They should've told her the risks-…"

"No one could have pre-empted this, boy! The least you could do is try to see it from her perspective-…"

"SHUT UP!" He screamed, flooring the gas as he sped into the fast lane. Damion kept his eyes on the road the whole time as he attacked his father. "You didn't talk to this guy! You didn't look him in the eye and see…_nothing_! So what? So you shot the bastard and put him in a hospital! It didn't faze him, did it? Now he's probably in some black Mercedes following a few car-lengths behind us, and running isn't gonna do any good! And meanwhile, I'm wasting gas while you're bitchin' that 'I should look at it from Lisa's perspective'! You know what? Damn it all, I don't give a rat's _ass_ about what Lisa feels about this!"

His father's mouth was a gaping hole, his eyes wide with surprise and confusion.

"It's time to face the cold facts, Dad," Damion stated, turning down the radio. "There is a hitman coming after us and we've got no one to turn to but the police. What Lisa's _feeling_ isn't gonna tip the scale. So _please_, would you do us all a favor and stop advocating her?"

They zoomed along at 70 MPH in stony silence until the sun was beginning to sink into the horizon behind them, sending amber beams of lights over everything when they finally pulled into a rest stop.


	4. They know they can survive

**Chapter Four**

_"...they know they can survive..."_

* * *

Lisa sat up, rubbed the pinkish sleep from her eyes, and let her father help her down from the back seat. She leaned on him for support as they made for the dining room. 

She mumbled something finally as they sat down with fast food. Joe asked her to repeat.

"Witness protection program," she answered, more clearly. "They'd take care of us."

"Now there's a thought…" her father mused.

"Wouldn't work. This guy's probably got a bead on us already. If it's not Rippner himself, someone in here's likely to have been following is," Damion commented under his breath, surreptitiously looking around the room.

They lowered their voices.

"Then hiding is useless," Joe commented, his face crestfallen.

"Right." The boy hunched over his Red Bull, taking another gulp. Looked like he would be pulling the all-night shift; his father let out a stifled yawn.

"I still vote police. They can offer more protection, at any rate," Lisa demanded.

"Fine. The next dispatch we pass, we'll go in. Until then, we shouldn't stop for anything."

"No hotel?" Mr. Reisert queried, taking a big bite of hamburger.

"Absolutely no hotel. We'd be in one place for too long. Doesn't anyone else think tactically? Or did we forget about the _last_ hotel we stayed in?"

They gathered up their fast food, an inverbal consensus reached that they shouldn't stick around. The trio was mere steps from the door when Damion sighed, handed his bag to Lisa and spun on his heels.

"Nature call," he told them. "Go start the engine and wait for me."

He stood at the urinal, attending to business, and tried to think. It didn't help that the slightest noise spooked him, causing increasing twitchiness with every noisy drop from a leaky faucet or the skitter of a cockroach on the floor.

Scowling at the tiny brown insect, he almost disregarded the tiny bit of movement he caught in his peripheral vision reflected in the warped reflection of the stainless steel piping.

Spinning around, he saw nothing. He turned back and cursed when he saw a bit of urine had missed the bowl.

"Fuckin' hell," he swore as he zipped up, condemning his overactive senses more than his aim.

He was three feet from the door when suddenly someone wrapped a hand around his throat and slammed him against the wall.

Damion's head his the tile with a dizzying, sickening crack. As his eyes rolled, he heard a cruel, grating voice chuckle.

"I told you we'd talk soon."

Finally, his vision partially clear, he laid eyes on a bedraggled Rippner, his hair cut into a much shorter style, probably to avoid recognition. A still-red crescent of stitches decorated the hollow of his throat. He wore a nondescript gray suit jacket and slacks.

He also held a long knife up against Damion's half-turned head.

The boy choked for air and tried to gather his senses. Rippner's nails dug into the flesh of his neck, threatening to plunge into his windpipe.

"Y-you're not gonna get her…" Damion managed to wheeze. "They're gone."

Rippner chuckled, his voice deep and much less strained as it had been back in the hospital. "If they are, it's not for long. My associate's on their tail. They can't drive forever

"And besides, don't think of this as a vendetta. You're a guy; you'll understand the logic. The job went bad. And if at first you don't succeed…

"Destroy all the evidence."

He pulled the blade back, and in a sheer rush of fear for his life Damion ducked, and in lieu of burying into his face, the blade instead sliced a clean line across the skin above the boy's right eyebrow. Blood clouding his sight, Damion stumbled out of the bathrooms and outside, where he screamed to the confused Lisa and Joe who sat in the running car.

"Drive, damn it! He's _here_! _Go_!"

Lisa was about to jump out of the Jeep to help him, but suddenly Joe saw something that made him floor the gas.

It was a good thing he did. With a rumble and a screech of tires, a Hummer plowed through the lot, right into the recently vacated spot the Reiserts had just been in.

Damion met his sister's frantic eyes as they drove away, and all too suddenly was drawn back into his own reality as he felt someone entwine their fingers in his hair and yank back.

He did have enough time to see Rippner's face above his before something hot and sharp cut its way through the thin tissue of the left side of his throat, sending Damion to the asphault in blazing pain and into a pool of his own blood.


	5. Don't turn your back or dare relax

**Chapter Five**

_"...Don't turn your back or dare relax..."_

* * *

"Oh my god!" Lisa wailed as they desperately tried to avoid the seemingly possessed Hummer that pursued them. Joe swerved and sped around the lot, trying to make their attacker lose control and crash.

Soon it paid off. The huge car slid into a pair of SUVs and hopelessly embedded itself. They were safe.

Unfortunately, they were also accidentally hurtling down the lane back onto the highway. Lisa was screaming that they had left Damion, but Joe was trying to placate her.

"Honey, he can run! I can't turn around! We have to get off at the next exit!" he shouted, joining the oncoming traffic carefully. He hadn't seen Rippner cut Damion. He had no idea that his only son was slowly bleeding to death, left for dead by his attacker and his family.

Lisa, however, was hysterical, and beyond explaining this to him. "Go back! Go back!" she kept screaming, her tears streaking gray lines of faded mascara down her cheeks. She couldn't understand, couldn't grasp that her father didn't know what she knew, that he'd been preoccupied trying to evade the Hummer while she had watched her brother fall to the ground, covered in blood.

They sped along the right lane while Lisa fumbled to use her cellphone to call 911. Her father gave her a look, and then returned to the wheel.

"Hello? Yes, there's been an accident. My brother, he's been cut. Someone cut him…" Joe heard before his face morphed into shock and he slammed on the brakes, skidding to a stop on the shoulder.

"What!" he bellowed.

Lisa continued on the phone as Mr. Reisert realized that stopping was counter-productive and merged once more into the flow.

She hung up after giving them the location and they began to search for an exit. Unfortunately, they were along a stretch of highway that – both of them remembered with a sinking feeling in their gut – had no such salvation for at least a couple dozen miles.

* * *

Damion gasped for air. He felt someone yanking his arm, dragging him along the ground and wearing his shirt thin where his body contacted the ground below. He was covered in something wet, something that was beginning to dry in places and making his skin sticky, but every time he tried to open his eyes, the light blinded him and he shut them once again.

Suddenly someone lifted him up and dropped him somewhere dark. He heard the sound of muffled cursing and the roll of a van door closing registered right before the door slammed shut, hitting his head and making him see an explosion of stars behind his closed lids.

"Jesus, Rippner, the kid's close to death already. You wanna kill him?" a man snarled.

Rippner's cold voice sounded from somewhere close as the car revved up.

"Right now, I don't give a fuck if he lives or dies."

* * *

Half an hour later, Joe and Lisa Reisert rolled into the parking lot to a scene of several police cruisers and an ambulance flashing their lights. The cops had taped off an area with their telltale "Do not cross" yellow strip, and Lisa could see a crew of investigators was examining the huge spot of blood on the ground-...

She looked away, clutching her mouth, trying to hold back the vomit. It was her brother's blood. All of it. It had come from the gaping slash across his neck that she'd watched Jackson give him, and the wound she didn't recognize that had been on Damion's forehead.

Unfortunately, the vomit came and she bent over the grass, expelling the morning's danishes into the bad landscaping. When she'd finished, she realized her father was holding some tissue for her. She took them and wiped her mouth.

"Thank you," she whispered.

He nodded and turned back to the policeman who was interrogating him about the events.

She wandered away to sit on a bench. Lisa buried her face in her hands and realized suddenly that she'd stopped crying. Feeling as if she had to be more upset, she tried to cry more, but the tears just wouldn't come. She was used up, and now an empty void resided in her chest. And she felt guilty for trying to appear sad.

"Honey, we can't do any more," her father explained as he came over. "No more than allow the police to help us. They want us to spend the night at the building, and then we'll go from there."

She looked up at the sky. When did it get so dark? The last smudge of red sunlight was fading into the endless dark blue that had become the sky, and in the east stars had already begun to twinkle. She focused on a small one, a red star that, if she didn't look directly at it, would change from orange to yellow to red again as if in a kaleidoscope.

Lisa managed to hold in the new assault of tears as she realized her brother would never see the stars – or anything else for that matter – again.


	6. As long as vengenace strives

**Chapter Six**

_"...as long as vengenace strives..."_

* * *

"Wake up, you little shit!"

Someone kicked him in the side. Damion's eyes snapped open, and it took him a moment to adjust to the fresh pain. He felt like he'd only just fallen asleep, whereas it might have been several hours.

He wouldn't know. He'd been locked up in this godforsaken warehouse without a clock ever since they'd taken off the piece of cloth they'd tied over his eyes in the van. He coughed up a bit of blood, and was thankful to see that it was less than he'd been hacking up for awhile. Maybe he was healing.

A shoot of pain from his neck woke him up faster than the kick. Maybe not.

He rolled over, every motion costing him. The beating wasn't the first he'd received; the bastards had bound his hands and ankles with tape and slapped a piece over his lips, then went to town. Bruises the size of bowling balls probably had appeared all over his chest, legs and arms.

Thankfully, they'd wrapped some gauze around his neck to staunch the bloodflow. Obviously they didn't want him dead yet, contrary to whatever Rippner had said, although the jury was still out on whether that was a curse or a blessing.

A big guy, stocky and Hispanic, reached down and pulled him up, throwing Damion into a hard, straight-backed metal folding chair. Damion winced as his sore back hit the aluminum and his let out a little muffled noise.

"Shut up," the man spat, backhanding Damion across the face. His head snapped to the side and he heard his neck crack, but thankfully it wasn't broken. Slowly he brought his face forward, his head drooping forward, his chin on his chest as the man wrapped more duct tape around him and the back of the chair, ensuring he couldn't move.

"Calm down, Louis," a smooth voice demanded. Damion's ears perked up and what little blood he had left in him caught on fire: Rippner. He looked up, his eyes blazing with repressed fury.

And there stood the little bastard. He was straddling another chair and staring at Damion with a strange little smirk on his face.

"Morning, sunshine," he crooned.

Damion tried to go for him, but instantly remembered that he was tied to the chair and was completely incapable of moving his entire upper body. His legs, still bound at the ankle, were just as useless. So instead he just gave the man a piercing look.

"I hope you had a nice nap. Some of us don't get that luxury. We're too preoccupied with trying to track down the last few people who can connect our employees with the attempted Keefe assassination." He leaned a bit forward and cocked his head. "You wouldn't be able to help us out with that, would you?"

A moment passed when neither man breathed. Losing his patience, Louis grunted and landed a punch to Damion's gut.

The boy was curling up in pain when Rippner let out a loud sigh.

"Oh, no _wonder_ you aren't answering. I forgot, you have all that _tape_ over your mouth!" As he said the word "tape", he reached forward and mercilessly tore the offending substance off Damion's face, and the boy let out a scream of pain.

"Ow! Fucking hell!" he cursed, gasping. His lips were already chapped; now that Rippner had torn off the top few layers of skin, he felt the edges of his mouth begin to bleed. The metallic taste spread over his tongue, and he closed his mouth.

"So, now that you're capable of normal speech," Rippner continued, "how about you tell me where the Reiserts are headed?"

Damion let his face go blank, cocked an eyebrow, reeled back and spat a mouthful of bloody saliva straight in the man's face. Rippner fell back, wiped himself off, and scowled as Louis gave him another slam to the gut.

"I'll warn you once: you ever do that again and you'll never walk again when I get through with you."

Damion hissed through his teeth, convinced that he was contracting internal injuries with every punch Louis gave him. If he ever pissed again, he'd have to remember to check for the telltale black discharge that proved it.

"So I'm gonna ask you again, and this time I want an answer. Where is Lisa?" Rippner snarled.

Damion took a moment to recover himself, then sat back up and stared the man straight in his face. "In Neverland, Tinkerbell. You want her, you gotta think happy thoughts."

He had only a moment to sneer at his captors before Rippner began to crack his knuckles.

* * *

The room was cold and gray, the walls painted in peeling off-white tones that looked like they hadn't seen the living world in a decade. A set of bunk beds stood, stark and bare, against the back wall, made with thin brown sheets and blankets. 

The Reiserts' faces fell when they laid eyes on their home for the next indefinite period of time.

"No window?" Joe asked.

"No. One less way for anyone to shoot at you," their officer escort explained. "You're surrounded on all sides by two feet of concrete, and after that are offices as far as the building limits go. This is our one and only 'safe room'. Feel special; no one's had to use this in over two years."

Lisa sighed and set her bag down on a wooden chair. "It's not very homey."

"Well, it's not _meant_ to be, is it?"

"I guess not."

The policeman left them to unpack and Joe went up to rub his daughter's back reassuringly when he heard her begin to sniffle. "You know, honey…there's no proof that-…"

"I know."

"He could still be-…"

"I know."

They fell silent. The clock on the wall endlessly bore testament to every passing second with a constant click that resounded in the room louder than a freight train.


	7. One shouldn't go on wasting time

**Chapter Seven**

_"...One shouldn't go on wasting time..."_

* * *

His eyes cracked open. It was tough to see through the swelling, and the perceived darkness at the edges of his vision he attributed to the bruises that he probably had.

If he had a mirror, it would probably shatter. Damion knew he looked a fright. Felt like it, too.

He tilted his head back a bit and realized he was lying on his side on cold concrete. Without a doubt still in the warehouse, or wherever he'd been when Louis and Rippner had given him a solid beating.

_Rippner_… Damion's blood boiled, and he winced in pain as he felt his skin erupt in fire. All up and down his arms and chest, tiny gashes split open oh-so-slightly to let more blood leak out. When he'd insulted Rippner, the assassin had decided to filet him slowly, carefully, so as to not just hurt, but _torture_. He'd spent the better part of an hour tracing shallow lines on Damion's skin through his shirt, which now hung on his torso in tattered, frayed remnants.

He was disgusted with himself. It hadn't been like in the movies, where the hero remained silent throughout the trying interrogation, taking the punches and turning his head dramatically to the side while he spit out the blood and stared down the bad guy under half-closed lids. He didn't have artistic scars or carefully administered bruises. What's more, he hadn't stood up under the pressure.

Of course he hadn't sung like a canary. If he had, he might as well have asked Rippner to pull out his spine while he was at it; Damion certainly wouldn't have needed it afterwards. No, he was no snitch.

But he _had_ mentioned the police. It was meant in a mocking tone when he'd said it. "All this slicing and dicing isn't gonna do any good, you bastard," he'd snarled. "They're probably safe in the arms of the Florida State Police already. You're never gonna see them again."

And then Rippner had chuckled in that obnoxious holier-than-thou tone and Damion's face had fallen. And then he'd gone back to having his skin peeled off his bones.

_Damn it_… Damion writhed a bit more on the floor. He felt his wrists still bound behind him with the duct tape, but as he shifted position he realized his left arm had gone dead due to the lack of circulation. Just as the blood rushed back into it, he gasped as the prickling, wild pain enveloped it and drove him half-mad.

"_Fuck_!" he screamed, hearing the word echo off the metal walls and come back to him a hundred times, fainter and fainter until it was gone.

Suddenly he heard someone moving far off behind him, and he tried to turn over but was just too weak. But all too soon he heard that grating telltale throaty laugh that sent a shudder of rage up his spine.

"Son of a bitch," Damion cursed, more to himself that to Rippner. The man walked over into his sideways vision and crouched down on his haunches, cocking his head and smirking.

"Comfortable?" the assassin queried.

"Fuck you."

"I don't swing that way, kid. If I did, I still wouldn't give a mangled twerp like you a second glance. You look ravishing, by the way."

"Yeah, I'm a goddamned prom queen. You gonna kill me, or what? Because if you're just keeping me around for information, you've got another thing coming."

"You don't know anything else."

"This the part when I'm supposed to start talking to prove you wrong?"

Rippner grinned and shook his head. "Alright, so you're not as stupid as I thought you were. But you are still pretty dense. Let me lay this down for you: you will tell me everything you know about where your sister and your father are, and I only pull out _one_ of your lungs."

"Yeah? What if I don't? Ever think of that?"

Rippner shrugged and grinned. "We'll see how long you can hold your breath."

Damion balked, his face stony and cold. "If you meant that, you'd have already done it."

"You calling my bluff?"

"Damn right I am."

Rippner chuckled. "Alright. Smart boy. You're right, I'm not planning on killing you. You're a lot more valuable as collateral. Once we let 'sis' know I've got you, we might be able to lead them out of hiding."

"She'll think it's a trick. Don't underestimate Lisa, you arrogant fuck. She's not stupid."

"I'm sure she's not. But she _is_ a sentimental thing. She couldn't even let the Keefes die to save her own father. What makes you think she's gonna ignore her own brother?"

"Common sense."

"Wake up, boy!" Rippner gave Damion a swift kick to the gut, and the young man curled up, hissing in pain. "Your sister is an emotionally-driven, whining, sniveling _woman_. She's gonna practically wet herself when she finds out that no, her brother _isn't_ dead like they thought, but something much worse: he's being held hostage by the one guy that _really_ got under her skin. You think after wasting weeks of my life following her around I wouldn't already know all this about her?"

Something occurred to Damion and he managed to grin a bit through the pain. "If you're so sure, why are you telling me? You think _my_ knowing this will make it more true? Or are you worried she might not actually give a fuck?"

This struck a nerve. Rippner's right eye visibly twitched and he glared down at Damion with the air of a madman. "Keep it up, kid. There won't be enough left of you for them to bury."

Suddenly he disappeared and Damion was left to writhe on the floor in his ongoing misery.


	8. Warping others' lives

**Chapter Eight**

_"...warping others' lives..."_

* * *

Lisa sipped the strong Earl Grey tea that came in the brusque, heavy white mug. She held the steaming drink under her chin, taking deep whiffs of its scent and trying to control her emotions yet again.

Her father sighed and put down the paper he'd been trying to read. "Penny for your thoughts?"

She glanced up and smiled softly, as if trying to deny the red, puffy skin around her eyes. "I wouldn't pay half a cent for them."

"I'll bite anyway. What's on your mind?"

"I'd have thought that would have gone without saying." She let out a deep breath and put the cup down, curling her fingers into fists and pulling them close to her.

"Damion?"

A pause. "Yes." She let go and began to cry again, which she hadn't done since twenty minutes ago. It was an amazement there was anything wet left in her. She wondered whether her father was fed up with it yet; Lord knew she was.

_Another of Rippner's last laughs?_ she thought before she could stop herself. _He was right; she was just an emotional little _thing_ that couldn't control herself._

No, she snapped back at her subconscious. She would _not_ succumb to his mind games. They'd already lost Damion because of her inability to cope with the stress. She wouldn't let him tear the Reiserts apart from the inside out.

"I think," she managed, sniffling hard, "that it's just worse because we don't _know_, you know? If we had some closure, maybe it would be easier. But we don't know if he's still alive, or if they still have him, or if he's just-…"

"Honey, I think we can assume-…"

"No! That's the point; we can't assume anything, because there's nothing to go on besides the fact that he was beaten bloody when they took him! And why would they take him at all, anyway? He's not m-…!"

She stopped, almost afraid to consider what she might have just said. She froze and looked away from her father, who didn't pick up on the almost-Freudian slip.

"They took him, Lise, because they probably wanted to get him to tell them where we were going. But then again, it wouldn't take a genius to figure out who we're with now." Joe rolled his eyes and took a bite of his donut.

"Yeah…" She pulled her thick brown blanket closer to her, avoiding any kind of eye contact. God help her if she'd actually meant what she'd almost said.

* * *

"Alright, kid, here's the deal."

Rippner was straddling a chair in front of him again, this time holding a nondescript gray cellphone. Damion however could see a cruel-looking knife sticking out of his back belt-loop, so he assumed the next few minutes of instructions would be followed by some not-so-nice retribution if defied.

"I'm going to dial your sister's phone," Rippner explained. "You're gonna let her know you're still alive and in an incredible amount of pain, which – as you damn well know – will only get worse if we stay in this stalemate for much longer. Once you've told her that, I'll instruct you from there." He smirked and punched in the numbers. "Any questions?"

Damion sneered. "Yeah. When we're done, you think you can order a pizza? Or do they not deliver all the way out here?"

"Shut up." Rippner hit the call button and put the phone up against Damion's face. It rang twice and then the other line picked up. A female voice answered "Hello?"

Damion's heart leapt. It was a recorded voice, sultry and suggestive and quite obviously _not_ his sister's.

Thinking fast, he began to talk to it. "Um, yeah. Sis? It's me." He paused for effect. "Yeah, yeah, I'm alright. Well, ok, not _all right_, but I'm alive. They want to get out of this stalemate, so-…"

He looked to Rippner and gave him a look that asked "What now?"

"Tell her we're arranging a meeting."

"They want to set up a meeting," Damion repeated. The voice on the other line was asking if he wanted to order the time in English or Spanish. What kind of phone number had Rippner dialed?

"Tell her we'll call again when the situation's been set up, and to keep the line open," the other man demanded.

"I've got to go now, sis, but they say they'll call again when everything's set up, ok? Yeah…love you too-…"

Just as he was finishing, Rippner had been pulling the phone away. Suddenly, they both heard it, loud and clear.

"Ooh, baby, you won't be able to talk to me if you don't dial your credit card number!"

Both of them sported a very confused expression. Rippner put the phone to his ear and listened for a few seconds before chuckling and hanging up.

"Nice touch, kid. I especially liked the 'love you, too' part. Although I don't know why you had a _phone sex line_ in your wallet with your sister's name on it!" he snarled before slamming a fist into Damion's stomach.

As he was doubled over recoiling from the blow, Damion looked down to see the piece of paper on the floor. _God damn it, Tim_, he cursed his dorm mate. The guy had given him the scrap of paper last week. "Ask for Lisa," he'd laughed as he shoved the note into Damion's hands. "Before you know it, no more frustration!" Damion had tucked the paper into his wallet, resolved to never see it again. Apparently he'd been wrong.

"You know, it's the strangest family resemblance. Lisa did the same thing, and damned if she didn't make it just as believable." Rippner grinned. "You're both _very_ good actors, kid. What's your name, anyway?"

"Damion," he growled, glaring.

"Well, Dame, I'll tell you what. You won't _have_ to act the next time you try to pull shit like that again. Now what's her real number?"

Damion recited it off under his breath as Rippner dialed.

"Now, this'll be take two. And make sure it's not some recorded hooker this time."

* * *

Lisa felt the phone buzzing in her purse and stared at it for a good four rings before realizing she should answer it. Cautiously, without even considering who was calling, she dug it out and pushed the "answer" button.

"Hello?" she greeted shakily.

Joe looked up in surprise as he heard the _crack_ the cellphone made as it hit the concrete floor. Lisa was frozen in her chair, her mouth slightly open and her eyes blank. He heard a muffled sound coming from the phone, and he reached for it.

"Lisa, what's the matter? Who is it?" he asked before glancing at the number. "Do you know who this is?"

She didn't respond. Her hand was still fixed near her ear, hanging in and on to nothing, and her face was still slack except the slight quivering of her lower lip.

Joe put the phone to his ear and answered again. "Hello?"

"D-…_Ow_! All right, all right! Put Lisa on the phone!"

Mr. Reisert pulled the receiver away from his ear and stared at it incredulously, then handed it towards his daughter. "Honey, it's for you."

Slowly she reached for it and put it to her ear. "D-Damion?"

Joe's face went pale as well. Lisa struggled to pay attention to what her brother was saying and keep from crying in joy that he was still alive.

"Lise, I'm alive, ok? But it's not gonna _be_ that way for much longer if you don't listen to me, ok? I'm under some time constraints."

"Ok…"

"They want to set up a meeting and they're gonna call back with the details once it's set up. Ok? I'm gonna call you again. Just tell Dad I'm ok-…_god damn it_!" He paused for a moment and Lisa struggled to make out what he was saying. Obviously he was cursing something awful at whoever was with him on the other end of the line.

"Alright, I'm _not_ ok, I'm a mess and it's gonna get _worse_. But I'll call back and then we'll go from there! Do you understand?"

"Yes! Dame, where are you? Who has you? What-…"

"Hello, Lisa."

The voice sent a chill up her spine. Never in a hundred years would she forget the timbre, the inflection of that singular voice.

"_Jackson_."

"Right first time, Lise. Just checking in, making sure you and daddy are nice and comfy in the arms of the Florida State Police."

How did he know? Surely Damion hadn't told him? But then again, it was like her father had said: it wouldn't take a genius to figure it out. "He better not be-…"

"He's in a _very_ nasty condition, Lisa. Truth be told, I didn't know anyone could bleed this much. It's really very messy."

"At least I bleed, you son-of-a-bitch-dumb-bastard-…!" she heard Damion yell in the background before he was instantly silenced.

"Your brother's not the smart type, Lise. He just doesn't know when to shut up for his own good. It's going to get him killed." She could almost see the insipid smirk he must have been wearing.

"You're not setting up a meeting," she stated.

"I'm sorry?"

"You're not setting up a meeting. You're trying to lure us out into the open where you can kill us."

"Well, yes, that goes without saying. But not yet. See, we expect you'll have half the state police out there with you, ready to open fire on us. However, we're not bringing precious little Damion with us. And you can bet I'm not going to be there. I'm going to be back at the base holding a Smith and Wesson .40 to his leg and pull the trigger should anything go wrong. And maybe I'll take off another leg should you just tick me off."

"You're a monster, Rippner."

"Sticks and stones, Lise. And they don't hurt _nearly_ as much as little Damion's hurting right now, or how much he's going to if things don't go perfectly as planned."

She put a hand to her mouth and winced, biting her lower lip.

"I told you we'd finish this later, Lisa," he crooned through the earphone. "And I always keep my promises."

The line disconnected and she let the phone fall again. This time the plastic casing cracked a bit when it hit the floor.


	9. Or you will find

**Chapter Nine**

_"...Or you will find..."_

_

* * *

_

Someone was singing. Damion moved a bit on the cold concrete and turned his head so he could hear it better.

His mother's soft voice was crooning the lullaby she'd always sung to him and Lisa when they'd been little and still living in the same house. He could see her, strawberry-blonde and beautiful, holding them both in her arms as she sung.

_"The winds of night so softly are sighing, soon they will fly your troubles to sea…"_

He moaned. His wounds were finally closing up, but his chest ached every time he breathed. His tattered shirt stuck to him with dried blood, and his pants were torn and ripped with being tossed around like a stick in a tornado.

_"So close your eyes on Hushabye Mountain, wave goodbye to cares of the day…"_

He bit his lip as he began to tear up. He'd give _anything_ to just be home again, safe under the covers with his sister and mother and not be beaten half to death with his family's life hanging in the balance. Must be why he was remembering the good times and even hearing the song that brought the images back…

"And watch your boat from Hushabye Mountain sail far away from Lullaby Bay."

Damion's gaze snapped up. God damn it, _Rippner_ had been the one singing it! The man was calmly polishing another of his vicious-looking knives, casual as you please, and singing to himself to pass the time.

Damion clenched his teeth. "Stop it."

Rippner glanced over. "You awake? I figured you'd be dead by now. I'm impressed; not a lot of people would be able to do such a good impression of a Picasso painting," he smirked.

"Go to Hell." He'd say anything to keep the man from humming that tune.

"You've got quite a mouth on you, Dame. If I were you, I'd start thinking about keeping it the hell shut."

"Well then it's a good thing you're not me, then, isn't it? Because if you were _me_, well then _you'd_ be the one lying on the floor, covered in his own blood, and I'd be loading a shotgun to blast you to Kingdom Come."

Rippner smirked again. "I guess it is a good thing I'm not you. But you're worth more to me alive than you are dead. That'll change once I get ahold of your sister. Then you won't be worth spit to me, except as moving target practice."

"So this is personal?"

He mulled this over. "Not really. It didn't start out that way; I just planned on tying up the loose ends. But now I'm kind of starting to enjoy it. Not healthy for me, but you take what you can get, right?"

Damion didn't answer. Instead he rolled over onto his back and gasped with exertion, and suddenly felt a painful pinch in his gut.

"You plan on feeding me anytime soon?" he managed to sneer. "I'm not gonna be worth much if I look like Picasso's rendition of an Ethiopian kid."

Rippner cocked an eyebrow. "When was the last time you ate?"

"Oh, I don't know. About two hours before _I have no fucking idea_! How long has it been since you bastards kidnapped me?"

"Hmm. I guess three days without food or water might be having an adverse effect on you." He got up and walked over to a cardboard box on a table nearby, from which he pulled what looked like day-old bread from some bakery and a bottle of water. Rippner brought them over and roughly sat Damion up, set the food in front of him and sat back to smirk and watch as the boy had to feed himself with his hands tied behind his back and his body screaming from the effort it took to move. Damion managed to bend over and get ahold of the bread, which he ate ravenously. But the water was tougher; he had to carefully tilt the bottle with his mouth so the liquid would spill into his cheek, and then he had to set it back up without leaking or choking on the water. This is repeated until the bottle was empty and Rippner was shaking with laughter.

"Go fuck yourself," Damion cursed as he sat back up, his face streaked with spillage and his clothes damp from where it had dripped.

"Sorry, sorry. I've never seen anyone try before. They've just ended up whining so bad that I ended up having to feed them myself." He tried biting back the chuckles.

Damion sniffed. "I wouldn't eat filet mignon if it came from your hand and I was dying."

"Don't look now," the man pointed out snidely, "But you just ate the bread I just gave you while you were dying from hunger and dehydration."

He felt the truth sink in and groaned in disgust. Defeated, Damion leaned back and looked to the ceiling. "What are you gonna do about my sister?" he asked quietly.

Rippner stopped his laughing, lowered his eyelids and let out a small grin. "Now _there's_ a topic. It's not what I'm going to do 'about' her, Dame. It's what I'm going to do 'to' her."

"So what? Kill her? You don't have much of an imagination, Rippner."

"Don't be stupid, kid. I wouldn't even waste my effort on you if it weren't for the fact that you just piss me off."

"Well, I'm deeply flattered. What about Lisa? What'd she do, besides defend herself? Jesus, doesn't anyone have the right to defend themselves?"

"Not in my book, kid. _She_ screwed up the plan, so _she's_ going to take the fall for it. It's gonna be a nasty fall, too. I have orders."

Damion furrowed his brow. "What? You mean this _isn't_ personal? This is still business, what you're doing to me and Lisa?"

"When did I ever tell you otherwise? It's always been business. And if the boss says to give her a mind fuck before I finish the deed, then I do it."

"Mind fuck?" he asked suspiciously. "What do you mean, 'mind fuck'?"

Rippner leaned back and his face went passive. "They want me to reenact her little mishap from two years ago," he explained expressionlessly.

Damion went still. "You wouldn't."

"I do what they tell me."

There was a pause before Damion Reisert exploded. _"You fucking bastard_! I'll kill you! You touch her and I swear to God, I'll-…!"

"You'll _what_? Bleed on me? You'll be dead. I'll kill you right in front of her. Right before I finish her, too."

Rippner watched as the boy struggled against his plastic prison. The duct tape was tangling and tearing at his flesh, but Damion ignored it as he attempted to tear it. "I'll kill you, Rippner! I will see you dead if you even _look_ at her!"

"Shut up." The murderer stood and walked over, where he swiftly gave Damion a gift of a kick to the stomach. Damion doubled over in fresh pain and moaned, seized with a sudden bout of coughing. Rippner watched, but they both felt a nervous shock as Damion's hacking expelled a spray of dark blood over the cement floor.

"Shit."


	10. A fractured mind

**Chapter Ten**

_"...a fractured mind..."_

_

* * *

_

It had been a disaster. Lisa lay curled in a protective ball, her stockings torn with runs, her heels gone (they'd been taken from her), her hair what she considered a rat's nest, and her fragile self-confidence lying in broken metaphorical pieces all around her in this cold, damp concrete cell. Damion lay nearby on a shoddy mattress, unconscious and maimed.

The plan had been simple enough: drive in a police convoy back to the Lux Atlantic and wait for more instructions. They'd been doing exactly as Jackson had instructed when they were blindsided by a pair of black Hummers that forced Lisa's Escalade onto an off-ramp and to the shoulder. Once stopped, a quartet of men had hopped out, executed her escorts, and forced her into one of the miniature tanks. Only after they'd blindfolded and handcuffed her had she realized how transparent the plan had been, and how stupid they'd been to have not seen it. She and the FLPD truly hadn't seen the forest for the trees.

She'd struggled at first, writhing against her bonds and trying to bite the men's hands when she'd heard Jackson's voice on the speakerphone.

"Leese," he'd taunted. "You're being a very _naughty_ girl. And when you're bad, little brother pays the price."

And before she could have even calmed down or called out to stop him, there'd been the unmistakable click of a gun loading and then a single gunshot.

Lisa's heart had almost stopped as she'd heard Damion cry out in a moan of rage and agony. "No!" she'd screamed. "No!"

"Then be a good girl and let the nice men bring you here."

Quiet tears dampened her blindfold as the Hummer had continued. After about fifteen or twenty minutes of driving, they'd finally pulled into this cool warehouse and Lisa had been relieved of her bindings and shoes and purse. She'd been tossed into this cell, where she'd found her brother passed out from the pain. After a few minutes of frenzied cries and attempts to rouse him, she'd given up and simply retracted into herself, waiting for any sign of what was going to happen.

* * *

Damion blinked and opened his eyes slowly. Well, he was indeed still in Hell. That much was evident. He was missing a leg from just below the knee down, his skin was easing up on the burning from so many gashes and he thought he heard someone sighing deeply, wavering on tears. _It's probably me_, he assured himself. _Most likely me. I mean, there's only so much a guy can take before he breaks down, right? I had a good moral run_… 

But it wasn't him. He turned his head slightly to see the figure of his sister, her face buried in her hands and her knees drawn up tight against herself. She sounded like she was crying.

"Leese?"

The woman looked up and her face instantly brightened. "Dame!" she cried, practically throwing herself at him. "Oh, Dame, Dame, you're alive! I thought you were dying, and I couldn't tell because your pulse is so weak and your breathing all shallow-…"

Rippner may have been a bastard, but a sadistically cruel one he was not. Just after he'd shot the young man and hung up with Lisa, Rippner saw to it that Damion's amputation point was hastily but expertly dressed and drugged. He'd even managed to drag the boy into this holding cell and onto the old springy mattress where he could sleep off the drowsiness caused by the painkillers.

"Yeah," he managed to grin. "Just barely. Good to see you, Leese."

Fresh tears welled up in both their eyes. But her smile fell into a despairing pout. "Dame, this is all my fault," she stated.

Well of _course_ it was. But he wasn't going to say anything. He didn't need to verbally agree with her. He was too happy to see her, albeit here, in Rippner's clutches.

"I'm sorry, I'm so sorry. It should be me, Damion. It should have been me…" She was holding tight to his bloodied shirt, now actually crying into him. He managed to lift his hand and rub her back reassuringly.

"Nah. What are siblings for, if not to taking a beating and a bullet for you?" he grimaced in an attempt to smile.

"No, I mean it. This…it should have been me. I can't believe he did this to you. It's my fault, _mine_. It should have been me. I'm…I'm so…_me_-…!" And then she devolved into a mass of sobs.

But Damion's brow suddenly furrowed and he frowned. "Leese, you don't mean that."

"I do!"

"You mean you wish it were _neither_ of us, right? You don't mean-…"

"Right! Of course!" she snapped.

But he sensed she answered too quickly. And her sudden glance away and expressionless face told him all he needed to know, and his eyes went wide and disbelieving.

"Oh no. Oh, _no_. Leese, you're _sick_!" he cried. "You're _sick_! Do you have any idea what you're saying? What you're _meaning_? That's called masochism, Stockholm syndrome, and I don't know what else! You've got a fucking _complex_ over this guy! Lisa!" He took her face roughly in his hands. "Don't tell me you're…_obsessed_ with this bastard!"

"No!" she almost screamed, tearing herself away from him. "No, no, no! Dame, he tried to kill us! That's just…!"

"Sick." He glowered. "All this time. He's wormed his way into your head, Lisa. Somehow he's gotten into your head and you seem to subconsciously think that he's ok."

"It's not true!"

"I'm minoring in psychology, Leese, remember? Jesus H. Christ." He threw himself back down on a mattress and rubbed his temples.

* * *

Lisa stared down at her brother, who was seething. Frankly, she was too. She never meant any of what he claimed she did. Oh, how could she express to him, explain to him that Jackson was everything she loathed? How could she convince her naïve brother that there was more to her than just her psyche? 

That was the trouble: convincing men that there was more to her than just what she said and did. Damion was assuming elsewise, and Jackson – the conniving, introspective son of a bitch that he was – assumed it too. Even her father tried to take her surface appearance and translate it into the language than men could understand. Male-driven fact-based logic, her ass; emotions held the truth about a person. It was never how one put it; all the stock was in how one _felt_ about a situation and _then_ acted on it.

She gathered her thoughts and self and managed to form a coherent, civil sentence. "I am _not_ attracted to Jackson Rippner," she snapped.

"Oh really? Then why in the hell would you want to be in my place?" Damion snarled back from his position on the mattress, propping himself up on his elbows.

"Because…" She took time to think about each of her words. "I would not wish my own problems or their consequences on anyone, least of all my own family. I love you, Damion, and I would never want you hurt, especially this badly."

He seemed to accept this and waited for more of an explanation. So she gave him one. "I feel terrible for you and wanted to comfort you. I didn't know you'd take what I said so literally. It is simply not fair that you are a mess and I don't have a single mark on me."

* * *

_Just wait,_ he thought, his heart falling as he remembered what Rippner had told him.

* * *

She took another deep breath and scowled. "You don't deserve to be in here, Dame. This is _my_ fight, and this asshole is _mine_ to deal with. I'm going to have to face him soon, and I'd rather be the one with all the cuts. It would piss me off even more." 

"Let's test that theory, Leese."

Lisa and Damion turned with wide eyes to see the steely expression of Jackson Rippner.

* * *

It wasn't so much that he enjoyed revenge as that he liked the feeling of a job well done. The Reisert girl was just an added bonus. After all, she _had_ stabbed him with a pen and given him a very unbecoming scar in the clear flesh of his throat. And her brother had been a royal pain in the ass. He was still pissed off at himself for not finding out about him in the eight weeks that he'd followed her. 

"Don't you touch her, Rippner!" the boy bellowed from his position on the floor, suddenly wrapping his bloodstained, slashed arms protectively around her. She looked around, confused. So her brother hadn't informed her of the plans?

It made him smirk a bit as the kid issued death threats. "I'll fucking kill you, Rippner. I'm gonna kill you!" he screamed as the muscle-head held him down. Two of the men from the Hummers pried the struggling woman from his grasp.

She spat on him. "Go fuck yourself, _Jack_."

Obviously she figured he was just going to kill them. The nickname stung, but he put on a bittersweet smirk as he ran the dull edge of his knife along her cheek, down her neck and stopped it over where he knew the scar marred her skin.

"Sure Leese. Right after you."


	11. Is harder to revive

**Chapter Eleven**

_"...is harder to revive." _

* * *

In the tiniest fraction of a second, Lisa's eyes snapped wide open and a strange calm came over her. Everyone saw it. Her struggling body between her two captors went rigid and did not move. It was if she was made of cracking glass.

Damion fought tooth and nail against the single man holding him down. Without one leg, it was impossible for him to stand up, but he bit and scratched until the other man's arms bled rivers and finally he was forced to grab the boy in a full-Nelson wrestling position, rendering him completely immobile. This didn't keep Damion from shouting out the worst possible curses he could come up with.

"God damn you, Rippner! _God damn you_!" he screamed, spraying flecks of blood all over his front. He had internal bleeding now, he was sure. The tendrils of dark crimson came flying up from his lungs, tracing macabre arcs through the air before splattering on the ground.

Rippner hadn't said anything yet. He was still reveling in Lisa's fragile silence, and the tears that were beginning to eke out from the corners of her eyes. He could almost hear her thoughts whispering _No, no!_ in frantic tones, saying what she herself could not manage to articulate.

"Y-you wouldn't…" she finally managed a soft, breathy plead.

He only gave her the coldest stare he could imagine and the cruelest, most twisted smirk anyone could express.

This was the last she could manage. Like the glass statue she'd transformed into, the spider-web of cracks that everyone had seen metaphorically blossoming on and in her finally collapsed and her eyes went blank, shutting off as her body went limp. The men all saw, and no words could express Damion's rage. His face was red (beneath the blood that had started to flow from his old wounds cracking), all his teeth were bared, and he struggled valiantly in his helpless position as Rippner stood there, sadistically triumphant, placing his gun on a small dilapidated desk nearby and sheathing his knife.

With a small nod of the head, he instructed the men holding Lisa to carry her out of the small room and into another of the usable cells. Damion screamed after her, but she was beyond comprehension at this point. She was little more than a rag doll, and all of them knew it.

Before following after them, Rippner turned back to Damion and when the boy fell silent, he gave him a curt nod.

"Didn't think it polite to make you watch."

As he exited, Damion kicked and flailed and did all in his power to get free. God _damn_ the man! Nothing on earth would ever sate his bloodlust for Jackson Rippner's dead body beneath him, and it was a grim deed that Rippner would kill them both, because if left alive Damion swore to skin him alive for his sister's sake.

The musclehead holding him dropped him roughly and went for the door, and Damion clawed after him, dragging himself along the floor as the door began to swing shut.

"_You God-forsaken fucking bastard_!" he managed to scream before the heavy metal gate swung shut in his face.

* * *

"Lisa. Lisa? Are you in there, Leese?" 

Jackson waved his hand in front of her face. Nothing. She was empty inside, gone to a place where supposedly nothing could hurt her.

He was alone with her in a cell two rooms down, the door shut and another of the filthy mattresses set upon a rusting bedspring in a corner. She was lying across it where the men had thrown her, unblinking, breathing shallow and completely motionless. Jackson stood over her, hands on his hips, contemplating how much of an effect his carrying out orders would have on her while she was in this state.

Suddenly his phone chirped, and he answered it. The voice in his ear was gruff and spoke in short to-the-point sentences.

"It's called off. Feds are too close. Release them both," the authority demanded, and the connection was severed.

Jackson stood there, the dial tone buzzing in her ear, expressionless for about two full minutes. Finally he slowly dropped the phone, staring at Lisa's inert body lying splayed across the makeshift bed.

It was off.

She and her brother were going to walk.

Jackson slowly put his phone away and looked her over again.

* * *

**Two Days Later**

Joe Reisert was dozing in a pale green chair, a magazine draped over his chest, his glasses askew. The few bouquets of lackluster hospital flowers managed to brighten the room only slightly, and the curtains were drawn against the dawning sun.

Damion lay flat on his pillow, staring brutally at the ceiling. His sister was sitting up in her bed, staring at the opposite taupe wall, her face expressionless.

"Leese," Damion said, causing her to blink but not look over. "You…that test. You-…" Then he fell silent. They both knew what test he was referring to. The one that would determine if she had been or not.

"I know," she responded softly, not wanting to wake their father. Joe didn't know about that part. He only knew that his son was in tatters and his daughter's mental health was hurt but not destroyed.

They lay in silence for a few more moments before suddenly a knock sounded at the door. A doctor entered quietly, not rousing the elder Mr. Reisert but commanding the immediate attention of both Lisa and Damion.

"Well, Mr. Reisert," the man explained, "Your surgery went well and we'll get you the name of a wonderful prosthetist. Unfortunately, those scars are tough to cover up, but we have some tips for you."

"Don't bother," he muttered.

Used to this response, the doctor went on to turn to Lisa. "Miss Reisert, you sustained minimal injuries, just some bruising and minor cuts. If there's anything else…"

He suspected something, clearly, but neither of the were speaking up. Damion knew it was her decision to get checked. And Lisa couldn't seem to muster up the courage.

The doctor continued. "Well, if either of you would like references for therapists, please do ask. It may not seem necessary now, but I assure you that it never hurts to have someone to talk to." And with that, he left them alone.

"Leese?"

She turned; eyes full of unshed tears. He reached his hand out over the gap between their two beds and held it out.

"I don't know why we're still alive or what happened back there to change the plans. But I do know that it happened, and we are still alive. Dad loves you. And I love you."

With the first smile he'd seen from her in awhile, Lisa reached out to take his hand.

_**Fín**_

* * *

(A/N) I left the ending open for readers to interpret as they will. You may think whatever you like about the gaping resolution, depending on your opinion of this story's interpretation of Jackson Rippner. 


End file.
